Payment Systems

Payment system is one key mechanism that facilitates and lubricants economic activities through flexible, safe, and effective settlements. Payment systems involves with everybody as part of daily lives of ordinary people as well as accommodating business operations.

To fulfill its tasks in supervising and and maintaining stability of the payment systems, the Bank of Thailand has continuously developed and promoted payment systems by focusing on:

- Enhancing efficiency of the payment systems by promoting more convenience payment channels that respond to demand from various groups of users

- Reducing risks in payment systems to ensure that electronics payment is sound, secured, and in line with international standard.

- Protecting and educating users to make them understand rights and responsibilities so that they are capable of choosing appropriate services and create confidence in using payment systems.

The BOT has continuously developed and promoted payment systems to ensure they are up to date, efficient, and able to accommodate demand of present users. Among key payment services are:

- BAHTNET (Bank of Thailand Automated High-value Transfer Network) the financial infrastructure that enables payer to make same-day transfer of a large amount of money via electronics system to payee whose deposit account is at different bank than the payer.

- Cheque clearing system The Bank of Thailand, in cooperation with commercial banks, has implemented the Imaged Cheque Clearing and Archive System (ICAS)​, an imaged-based interbank cheque clearing system that reduces the need to process actual cheque and shortens cheque clearing cycle to one-day nationwide. The implementation of ICAS allows payees to withdraw money from their accounts on the following day after the image of the cheque has been cleared. It also allows banks to extend cheque deposit period and reduce costs of transporting actual cheque.

​Furthermore, the BOT has promoted E-Payment such as debt card and E-Money to replace cash as well as financial service accessibility. The BOT has also introduced measures such as electronics card standard and other measures to boot safety of ATM usage to improve electronics payment security.

To prepare for the upcoming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the BOT has driven the development of settlement infrastructure to accommodate cross-border electronics payments such as Asian Payment Network, which is ASEAN electronics card network. At present, users can withdraw money from ATM regional network and within the next few years, they should be able to pay for goods and services as well.